Esther Rantzen: What did you want to be when you were growing up?

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

This is a standing question in The Guardian's decades-long The Q&A and also recurs independently in career and life interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Esther Rantzen said elsewhere, not written here

A teacher and a nightclub singer.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 February 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Michael Stipe American singer

Archaeologist, pop star, store cashier.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 January 2020 source ↗

Rosalind Eleazar

An air traffic controller.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 February 2025 source ↗

Martin Freeman English actor

I wanted to be a footballer and then a squash player – I was in with a chance because I was very good. But I fell out of love with that by 14 or 15 and joined a youth theatre.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 January 2019 source ↗

Alison Moyet English singer

For a while I wanted to be a policewoman, but I didn’t have five O-levels.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 June 2017 source ↗

More from Esther Rantzen

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Question What is the worst job you have done? Craft & work

When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 February 2024 source ↗